Anthrax

Anthrax is one of the oldest diseases known to mankind. Anthrax was once epidemic and still appears in many areas of the world today. Naturally occurring anthrax is a disease acquired following contact with infected animals or contaminated animal products. The disease occurs commonly in herbivores, which are infected by ingesting plants that are growing in soil impregnated with spores of anthrax. It was the first infectious disease for which scientists isolated the disease-causing organism. There are three main types of the anthrax disease: (1) cutaneous anthrax (2) inhalation anthrax and (3) gastrointestinal/orophanyngeal anthrax. Anthrax is an infectious disease of animals that can be transmitted to humans. It is a bacillus that mainly affects sheep, horses, hogs, cattle, and goats causes anthrax. The disease is contracted by these animals from contaminated soil, feed or water. Anthrax has a high fatality rate in both humans and animals. Transmission to humans normally occurs through contact with infected animals but can also occur through breathing air with the spores of the bacilli. The disease is almost entirely occupational. It affects people who work with animal hides and wool. In the cutaneous form, lesions occur on the body where there was an open cut. It is usually not fatal because it can be diagnosed early. Inhalation or pulmonary anthrax causes lesions in the lungs and brain. Robert Koch found pure cultures of the anthrax bacillus in 1876. Louis Pasteur developed a method of vaccinating sheep and cattle against the disease. Anthrax from animals is uncommon in the United States because of widespread vaccinations of animals and disinfections of animal products, such as hides and wool. The anthrax bacillus has been used experimentally by various nations of the world as a biological warfare agent, although such use is banned by international convention. In 1979 an accidental release of anthrax bacillus from a military laboratory in the former Soviet Union resulted in at least sixty-six deaths.

Anthrax has been known from antiquity, although until recently it had not been clearly separated from several other diseases with similar manifestations. Nineteenth-century authors speculated the fifth and sixth plagues of the Egyptians as described in Exodus, which struck their herds and the Egyptians themselves, might have been anthrax. Three decades before the birth of Christ, Virgil, in the Georgics, vividly described an animal plague that had much in common with anthrax and warned against its transmission to people through contact with infected hides. Throughout the centuries, there are many records of animal plagues that almost certainly were anthrax but were often left confused with a number of other complaints. Since World War Two, the number of fatal human cases has been reduced because of antibiotic therapy.

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